The St. Joseph County Republican Party introduced its candidates for sheriff and county prosecutor on Friday evening at party headquarters on North Hickory Road. Precinct committeemen convened at 5 p.m. to fill the prosecutor ballot vacancy. Minutes later, the two men stood in front of reporters and took questions for the better part of half an hour.
Party chair Jackie Horvath introduced them as the Republican public safety ticket and put a number on what the party hopes to accomplish.
“St. Joseph County hasn’t had both a Republican prosecutor and a Republican sheriff in over two decades,” Horvath said. The two are committed, she said, to supporting law enforcement, standing up for victims, holding criminals accountable, and keeping the county a place people want to live and raise a family.
Rod Laureys won the Republican nomination for sheriff during the May primary election. Precinct committeemen unanimously selected John Maciejczyk as the party’s nominee for prosecutor at Friday’s caucus. Maciejczyk had been selected at an earlier caucus, ultimately withdrew his filing, and returned through a second caucus called to fill the resulting vacancy.
Laureys and Maciejczyk have worked together before. Laureys said he spent ten years working with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on the federal side. Maciejczyk was an assistant United States attorney. They said they worked cases together.
“I’ve seen him in the courtroom,” Laureys said. “He is an absolute beast.”
Maciejczyk answered in kind. “Rod and I did work together quite a bit,” he said. “I have the highest opinion of his capabilities and work ethic.”
The prosecutor
Maciejczyk graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1976 and served on destroyers in the Atlantic Fleet until 1981, earning the Navy Achievement Medal. He graduated from Notre Dame Law School in 1984 and served as Note Editor of the Law Review. He clerked for Chief Judge Ruggero Aldisert on the Third Circuit from 1984 to 1986.
Private practice in Houston and Elkhart followed. In 1999 he became chief deputy prosecutor for St. Joseph County, a post he held until 2002. He worked as an Elkhart County deputy prosecutor after leaving, then joined the United States Attorney’s office in 2004.
By his law school’s count, Maciejczyk has tried well over 100 criminal jury trials and has briefed and argued more than 30 appeals before the Seventh Circuit. He teaches cybercrime and cybersecurity at Notre Dame Law School. He and his wife, Christina, have six children, ages 14 to 32. He told reporters he is 71.
A reporter asked why he entered the race, withdrew, and then returned.
“It’s a tough decision to make, because it’s gonna be a big job,” Maciejczyk said. He talked it over with his wife and children, he said, and concluded he would lose time with his family. Then he met with Horvath and others in the party. “After some really heart-to-heart discussions, I decided to sign up again,” he said. “I know it looks like I’m going back and forth, which I did, but it’s just because this is gonna be a big job. My desire to help the community out kind of won out.”
Three priorities
Maciejczyk named training, communication, and transparency.
He taught trial advocacy to state prosecutors at the National Advocacy Center in Columbia, South Carolina, and did the same for federal prosecutors through the Department of Justice and the National District Attorneys Association. That work is missing locally now, he said. “The younger people are not getting the sort of training they need to do an effective job representing the citizens of this county.”
He wants a standing monthly meeting with every police chief in the county. He pointed to Elkhart County Prosecutor Vicki Becker, who he said holds one monthly.
On transparency, Maciejczyk said he would publish office statistics every month covering charging decisions, plea agreements, and trial outcomes. He put the felony trial team’s conviction rate during his time as chief deputy at roughly 85 percent and said his understanding is that the current rate is well below that. He did not claim firsthand knowledge of the current number. He said he could not recall the office ever making such figures public.
“I want the community to know how we’re doing,” he said.
He added that deputy prosecutors in St. Joseph County are paid poorly compared with the rest of the state, which he said makes the office hard to staff. He acknowledged the pay scale is not entirely the prosecutor’s to set.
Then he mentioned the door on the tenth floor of the County-City Building, the one that carries the prosecutor’s name.
“My name is never gonna be there, because it’s
the office that’s important, not me,” he said.
“It’s gonna be the St. Joseph County Prosecutor’s Office, not my office.”
The sheriff
Laureys is a Marine Corps veteran and a St. Joseph County police officer. His campaign runs on honor, integrity, and action, and on the claim that he is a working officer rather than a politician.
“I never intended on being sheriff. I never had those goals like all the others have,” he said. What moved him, he said, was watching officers go unsupported by their administrations.
His central promise is a drug unit. Laureys said the county no longer has one, and that when federal money became available through the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program, there was no unit to receive it. He wants a metro unit built with neighboring agencies and the city, starting on his first day.
“Where there’s drugs, there’s guns, and when there’s guns, there’s shootings,” Laureys said. He described people passed out on the curb along Michigan Street near the Transpo station. “People aren’t stupid. They see it.”
He wants patrol officers working proactively rather than driving call to call. “If they are proactive, they get in trouble,” he said. “That’s gonna change.”
He made a transparency pledge of his own: a short video every week explaining a crime from that week, posted on social media. Active investigations limit what can be released, he said, but in his view departments have withheld more than they needed to. “They (the current departments) wouldn’t say anything about anything, and I have a hard time with that.”
On surveillance and privacy
A reporter asked about Flock license plate readers. Neither candidate endorsed how the cameras are used in St. Joseph County now.
Maciejczyk said he is not familiar with the county’s Flock operations and declined to set a policy before he knows them. He explained the technology, noted the litigation in the federal courts, and compared the privacy questions surrounding Flock searches with police access to historical cell phone location records, an area where the Supreme Court has imposed tighter constitutional limits.
“That’s a similar type of privacy concern that the courts will be looking at with regard to Flock cameras,” he said.
Laureys has used the technology as an investigator. A violent convicted felon he was pursuing while working with ATF surfaced on a camera in Elkhart County, and agents moved in. He said the tool works, and then he said the rest of it.
“When the government’s in control of things, they get out of control, and that’s a problem I have with the privacy issue of it,” he said. If someone with camera access decides they dislike a particular citizen, he said, nothing stops that person from going to look. He wants the technology restricted, or at minimum monitored at a higher level.
“There’s gotta be safeguards.”
Laureys will challenge Democrat Scott Ruszkowski, South Bend’s police chief, in the general election on November 3. Maciejczyk will challenge Democrat Amy Cressy, the county’s chief deputy prosecutor.
Logan Foster
Logan Foster is the founder and editor of Redress South Bend, an independent news outlet covering local government, courts, and public institutions in South Bend and St. Joseph County, Indiana. He reports from primary documents: public records requests, court filings, state audit reports, and campaign finance disclosures. His reporting has examined city and school district payments made without competitive bidding, school board spending, and the records of candidates in county races. Redress South Bend obtained the South Bend Police Department's ShotSpotter coverage map after the department initially denied public access. The outlet is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Online News Association. Reach him at info@redresssouthbend.com
